Tag: Royal Enfield

Enfield 650 Valve Adjustment

This blog explains how to adjust the valves on a Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor.   This was the first valve adjustment my motorcycle has had, and it occurred at the 500-mile mark.  The first valve adjustment is an important one, as decreases in the valve gap will typically be more severe as the engine is breaking in.  For the record, though, on my bike’s eight valves only one was slightly tight (and that was one of the intake valves).  The other seven were pretty much where they were supposed to be, but I loosened the adjusters and readjusted them just to see if any were difficult to access or if they would give me any problems.  Accessibility was superb and the adjustments were all easy to make.

Like most threaded adjuster valve adjustments, 90% of the job is just taking away or loosening the stuff you need to get at the valves (and then putting it all back on the bike).  On the Enfield, that’s the right side body panel, the seat, the fuel tank and its connections, an electrical subassembly between the upper frame rails, and the valve cover.  The actual valve adjustment only takes a few minutes.

You’ll need several tools for this job.  Here’s the list:

      • Feeler gage.
      • 17mm socket.
      • 8mm socket.
      • 10mm socket.
      • Sparkplug socket.
      • 14mm Allen drive.
      • 4mm Allen drive.
      • Ratchet with extensions.
      • 10mm wrench.
      • Flat blade screwdriver.

Because I’m an old fart and a pack rat, I had everything I needed except for the 14mm Allen drive (that was one I had to order on Amazon).  Odds are you already have most or all of this stuff already, too.  We tend to pick up oddball stuff over the years.  If you live on the Tinfiny Ranch, that includes stuff like lathes, concrete mixers, tillers, old MGs, and more.  But the only tools you’ll need for adjusting the Enfield 650’s valves are what I listed above.

The other thing we need to do is make sure the engine is completely cool.  You can’t ride the motorcycle, shut it off, and then adjust the valves.  The engine needs to be cold.

Adjusting the valves sounds way more intimidating than it is.  I took a couple of hours to adjust the valves on my Enfield and this was the first time I did it.  On subsequent valve adjustments I’m guessing I’ll need less than an hour now that I know my way around the bike.  Dealers charge up to $581 for this job, which is kind of a joke when you consider the amount of time it takes (that is, if you think getting ripped off by a dealer is funny).  The dealers are counting on you being intimidated.  You shouldn’t be.  This is not a hard thing to do.

Start by putting your motorcycle on the center stand, as you see in the big photo at the top of this blog.   That makes getting to both the left side and the right side of the bike easier.

Use your ignition key to unlock the right side body panel.  It pivots out from the bottom and then pulls down, and that will take it off the bike.

Once the right side body panel has been removed, you’ll have access to the seat release (shown by the red arrow).  Pull it out and remove the motorcycle seat by sliding the seat to the rear.

The next step is to remove the two 10mm bolts securing the fuel tank to the frame.  This job is a lot easier if you run the fuel level down (it makes the tank lighter and easier to handle when you disconnect the two electrical connections and the three hoses underneath the tank).  I had mine on E, but there was still a fair amount of fuel in the tank.

Once the two bolts are removed, set them aside (not like you see here; put them someplace where you won’t lose them).  The tank will then slide to the rear.  Put a shop rag on the frame behind the tank so you won’t scratch anything.

As mentioned above, there are five things that have to be disconnected underneath the fuel tank so that you can remove it from the motorcycle.  As seen in the photo below, going counterclockwise from the upper left corner of the photo, these five things are:

      • An electrical connector to the fuel gage (the green connector).
      • A fuel vent line.
      • The fuel pump electrical connector (the yellow, red, and black connector).
      • Another fuel tank vent line.
      • The fuel hose (this is mated with a quick-disconnect fitting that stays on the fuel tank; it has a button you press to allow pulling the fuel hose off).

I show this on the motorcycle side of the equation.  It would have been a little tough to get a photo of the bottom of the tank.

Here’s another shot of the fuel hose quick disconnect male end (it stays with the motorcycle).

This is another shot of the fuel level gage electrical connector.

And here’s a photo of one of the fuel vent lines and the fuel pump electrical connector.

After tilting the tank up and disconnecting all five of the connections described above, remove the tank and place it on a cloth to prevent scratching.

At this point, disconnect the sparkplug leads and remove both sparkplugs.  We are going to crank the engine by hand, and we don’t want to have to fight the engine’s compression as we do so.

The next step is to remove the three Allen bolts that secure an electrical subassembly between the upper frame rails.  We don’t need to remove the subassembly; we just need it to be pushed up so that we can maneuver the valve cover out of the way (which, incidentally, I found to be the hardest part of the valve cover adjustment process).  Set the three Allen bolts aside in a secure location.

Next, remove the four 8mm bolts securing the valve cover.  Set them aside in a secure location.

Once the four valve cover bolts are out, you can remove the valve cover.  It will slide out on the left side of the motorcycle.  You’ll probably invent a few cuss words when doing this.  The valve cover is a tight fit between the cylinder head and the motorcycle frame’s upper rails (it’s why we loosened that electrical subassembly described above).  There’s a complicated and reuseable rubber gasket that seals the valve cover to the cylinder head.  Be careful not to nick the gasket when you’re sweet-talking the valve cover off the engine.

Once the valve cover is off the engine, you’ll have access to the valve adjusters.  As this is an eight-valve engine, there are four adjusters for each cylinder (two intake and two exhaust valves).  The four valves on the right side of the engine are shown below.

And these are the four valves on the left side of the motorcycle.

Here’s where you’ll need that 14mm Allen drive mentioned above.  It was the only tool I didn’t already have.  It was something like $6 on Amazon, and I now have two of them.   Amazon sent me an email a couple of days after I ordered the tool because they felt like they lost one in shipment so they shipped it again, and then two arrived in separate packages on the same day.  Don’t tell Amazon.  I’m keeping both.  Bezos can afford it.

Here’s the access port cover on the left side of the engine.

Remove the access port cover on the left side of the engine with the 14mm Allen drive.

Note that the access port cover is sealed with a rubber o-ring.  Don’t lose this part.

If you peek inside the access port, you’ll see a 17mm bolt head.  This is where the 17mm socket is used.  You can crank the engine by hand (always going counterclockwise, never clockwise) to bring the crank to a position where the valve being adjusted is not being lifted by the cam lobe.  This is known as getting the lifter on the cam’s base circle, and that’s what we want when we make the adjustment.

I had a feeler gage from way back tucked away in my tool cabinet.  If you don’t have one of these tools, they are available on Amazon.  We’ll need the 0.003 inch (or 0.076mm) feeler gage for the intake valve adjustment, and the 0.007 inch (or 0.178mm) feeler gage for the exhaust valve adjustment.  The intake valves are the ones on the rear of the engine (closest to the fuel injectors) and the exhaust valves are the ones on the front of the engine (closest to the exhaust headers).  I know.  Duh.

This valve adjusting business is done by feel with the use of the feeler gage.  I guess that’s why they call it a feeler gage.  You want to make the adjustment such that after you make it, there’s a slight drag on the gage as you move it back and forth between the valve stem and its actuator (you get the “feel” of this slight drag; hence the “feeler gage” name).

Enfield makes it easy to get the engine rotated to the right spot so that the lifter is on the cam’s base circle with a handy indicator located in the cylinder head.  It’s on the engine’s left side as shown in the photo below.  The indicator is marked with an L above a scribe line, and an R above a scribe line.

Turn the engine by hand with the 17mm socket (again, always counterclockwise, never clockwise) until the L and its scribe line are aligned with the line on the casting as shown below.   We want the L and its scribe line aligned with the corresponding line in the casting when we adjust the valves on the left side of the engine.  After we’ve adjusted the valves on the left side, we’ll want to do the same thing to get the R and its scribe line aligned with the line in the casting to adjust the valves on the right side of the engine.

When the crank is appropriately positioned (for the left side of the engine, as shown above), we are now ready to adjust the valves.

The actual valve adjustment is accomplished by loosening the bronze-colored valve stem lock nut with a 10mm wrench, then making the adjustment with a flat bladed screwdriver in the adjuster screw slot, while positioning the appropriate feeler gage blade between the adjuster and the valve stem.  This is what controls the gap between the adjuster and the vavle stem.  When the gap is what it’s supposed to be, lock the adjuster in place with the locknut.  We do this for both intake valves with the 0.003-inch blade, and both exhaust valves with the .007-inch blade.

After we’ve done the left side of the engine, we similarly rotate the crank to align the R index mark and then we adjust the valves on the right side of the engine.  The R has to be on the right side of the index plate so it reads right side up.

At this point, I rotate the engine two complete turns by hand and use the feeler gage to check the valve gap again.  If it’s not good I redo the above adjustments.  This is just a check.  For me, it’s always been good.

So, about that valve cover and the complicated seal between it and the cylinder head.  Here’s what it looks like from underneath.

Note that the seal is orientation sensitive.  It’s got a little half moon in the seal on the left side.   As mentioned above, getting the valve cover off was a challenge.  Getting it back in place with the seal properly positioned was even more of a challenge.  But neither steps were really that bad.  The good news is that this was the toughest part of the job, and it wasn’t that tough.

After you finish adjusting the valves, assembly is the reverse of disassembly.  There are three cautionary notes:

      • Use a shop rag or two on the motorcycle frame so you don’t scratch the frame or the fuel tank when you reinstall the fuel tank.
      • When you remake the fuel line quick disconnect, make sure you feel it click into position.  It’s possible to not fully make the connection, which could result in pressurized fuel being pumped out over your hot engine.  That would not be a good thing.
      • When you reinstall the valve cover, make sure the seal between it and the cylinder head is correctly positioned.  If it is not, oil will leak from this interface.

So there you have it.  For me, that’s $581 (what the closest Enfield dealer charges for a valve adjustment) going in the Baja kitty.  Or maybe the reloading components fund.  Whatever.  It’s not going into the dealer’s pocket, and that’s the point.

Enfield did a nice job engineering these bikes, I think, and they made the valve adjustment process straightforward.  It would have really been cool if the valve cover was designed so that it could be removed without taking the body panel, seat, and fuel tank off (like on an old airhead BMW or a Moto Guzzi), but hey, it is what it is, and what it is is way less complicated than most other modern motorcycles.  There’s also an argument to be made for hydraulic valves (which never require adjustment), but hydraulic lifters weigh a little more and don’t work well at high rpm.

More on Enfields?   Hey, read our series on taking two Enfields (a 650 and a Bullet) through Baja.  It’s what prompted me to buy my Enfield!

This idea on online maintenance tutorials was something we started at CSC Motorcycles with the RX3 250cc adventure touring platform introduction.  The market received it well and we had a lot of fun assembling the tutorials.  CSC was well ahead of the curve on this sort of thing and it is one of the many reasons their bikes have done so well.

The Six Best Motorcycles for Baja

This is a blog that is sure to be controversial and elicit a few comments. It attempts to answer a very specific question: Which motorcycles are best for Baja?

As a qualifier, let me mention a few things up front:

    • Most of my Baja riding is on asphalt, and that necessarily colors my opinions. Yeah, there’s a lot of great dirt riding in Baja, but I am a streetster at heart. Your mileage may vary.
    • You don’t need to spend $30K on a Baja blaster.  What good is driveway jewelry if you are afraid to get it dirty and if you’re constantly worried about where you parked?  In Baja, a big, heavy motorcycle (ADV-styled or otherwise) puts you at a disadvantage.  I am not a fan of huge displacement, tall, expensive motorcycles.  For real world riding (especially in Baja), monster motorcycles are more of a liability than an asset.  Even that new one that’s 20 years late to the party.
    • What I think you need in Baja is a comfortable bike with range. There are places where you can go more than a hundred miles between fuel stops, and you need a bike that can go the distance. That means good fuel economy and a good-sized fuel tank.
    • Luggage capacity is a good thing, but if your bike doesn’t have bags, you can make do with soft luggage. In fact, I’d argue that soft luggage is better, because it’s usually easier to detach and bring in with you at night.

With that said, here goes:

CSC’s RX3

Say what you want about Chinese bikes, and say what you want about smallbore bikes, I’m convinced my 250cc CSC RX3 was the best bike ever for Baja.

The RX3 tops out at about 80 mph and that’s more than enough for Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway (the road that runs from the US border all the way down to Cabo San Lucas). The bike is comfortable and it gets 70 mpg. The fuel tank holds over 4 gallons. I could carry everything I needed (including a laptop, a big Nikon and a couple of lenses, and clothes) in the bike’s standard panniers and topcase. I also carried tools and spare parts, but I never needed them. It was superbly well suited for Baja exploration, as I and more than a few others know.   One more thought…before you pummel me with the inevitable “Ah need at least a thousand cc” comments, take a look at our earlier blog, Why a 250?

Kawasaki’s KLR 650

I owned a 2006 KLR 650 Kawasaki for about 10 years. I bought it new and I loved the thing.  I think it is one of the best bikes I’ve ever ridden in Baja.  Yeah, it was a little tall, but once in the saddle I had no problem touching the ground.

The Kawi didn’t come with luggage, but I bought the cheap Kawasaki soft luggage panniers and a Nelson Rigg tankbag and I was good to go (I didn’t need the obligatory KLR milk crate). Although the KLR was heavy, it did surprisingly well off road (especially running at higher speeds over the rough stuff), and I did more offroad riding with the KLR than I have with any of the other motorcycles I brought into Baja. It averaged 56 mpg, and with its 6-gallon gas tank, I could make the trek between El Rosario and that first Pemex 200 miles further south without stopping for fuel.

CSC’s RX4

I’ve never owned an RX4, but I’ve ridden one a fair amount and I’ve done detailed comparisons between the RX4, the RX3, and the KLR.

I’ve never taken an RX4 into Baja, but I’ve ridden both (the RX4 and Baja) enough to know that it would do well down there. Think of the RX4 as an RX3 with more top end, more acceleration, and a bit more weight. It’s got the luggage and the ground clearance for extended travels with some offroad thrown in, and it also gets about the same fuel economy as the RX3. Fit and finish on the RX4 is superior (it’s almost too nice to take offroad).  The RX4 is a lot of motorcycle for the money.  The pandemic hit our shores not too long after the RX4 did, or I would have seen more of the RX4 south of the border.

Genuine’s G400c

I rode Genuine’s new G400c in San Francisco, courtesy of good buddy Barry Gwin’s San Francisco Scooter Center, and I liked it a lot.  It’s compact, it has adequate power, it has an instrument layout I like, and it’s a fairly simple motorcycle.

I think with soft luggage, the Genuine G400c would make an ideal Baja blaster, and the price is right:  It rings in right around $5K.  With its Honda-clone 400cc motor (one also used in the Chinese Shineray line and others), it has enough power to get up to around 90 mph, and that’s plenty for Baja.  I rode a different motorcycle with this powerplant in China and I was impressed.  I think this would be an ideal bike for exploring Baja.

Royal Enfield’s 650 Interceptor

Yeah, I know, the new Enfield Interceptor is a street bike with no luggage. But with a Nelson Rigg tailpak and Wolf soft luggage, the Interceptor was surprisingly in its element in Baja. Gresh will back me up on this.

We had a whale of a time exploring Baja on a loaner 650 Enfield (thanks to Enfield North America and good buddy Bree), and I liked the bike so much I bought one as soon as I could find a dealer that didn’t bend me over a barrel on freight and setup. There’s one parked in my garage now. The bike is happy loping along at 65-70 mph, it’s comfortable (although I’ll be the first to admit it needs a sheepskin cover on that 2×4 of a seat), and it gets 70 miles per gallon. I wouldn’t take it off road (except maybe for that 10-mile stretch to go see the cave paintings in the Sierra San Francisco mountains), but like I said at the beginning of this conversation starter, I’m mostly a street rider.

Royal Enfield’s 400cc Himalayan

I’ve seen these but not ridden one yet.  Good buddy Juan Carlos, a great guy with whom I rode in Colombia, has gone all over South America on Enfield’s new Himalayan and he loves it (that’s his photo below).  Juan knows more about motorcycles than I ever will, and if Juan says it’s good, it’s good.

I like the look of the Himalayan and I like its single-cylinder simplicity (come to think of it, with the exception of the Enfield Intercepter, every bike on this list is a single).  400cc, I think, is about the right size for Baja. The price is right, too.   Royal Enfield is making fine motorcycles that won’t break the bank.  I think the Enfield Himalayan would be a solid choice for poking around the Baja peninsula, one that probably has the best off-road capabilities of any bike in this list.

I’m sure I’m ruffling a few feathers with this piece, and I’m doing that on purpose.  I’ve been taking pot-stirring lessons from Gresh (that’s him in the photo at the top of this blog).  We’d like to hear your comments if you disagree with any of the above. Do us a favor and leave them here on the ExNotes blog (don’t waste your time posting on Facebook as that stuff will scroll on by and be gone; ExNotes is forever).

All the above notwithstanding, I’ll add one more point:  The best Baja motorcycle for each of us is the one we have.  You can ride Baja on just about anything.  I’ve been to Cabo San Lucas and back on everything from a 150cc California Scooter to a Harley Heritage Softail cruiser.  They’re all good.  Don’t put off a trip because you don’t think you have the perfect motorcycle for a Baja adventure.  Baja is the best riding I’ve ever done.

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I’ve done a lot of riding on a lot of different motorcycles in Baja.  You can read all about that in Moto Baja!

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British Vertical Twin Wannabees: Royal Enfield vs Triumph vs Kawasaki

I think most motorcycle videos are silly, including the ones I’ve done (and I’ve done a few).  It’s a personal preference…videos (compared to the written word and good photography) dumb down whatever they cover, and I would much rather read a good article with great photos than watch a video.  But on occasion I’ll stumble across a video I enjoy.  I recently encountered a couple that hit home for me.  One compares the Royal Enfield 650 to the Kawasaki W800, and the other compares the Enfield to a Triumph Bonneville.

Back in the day (the 1960s), British vertical twins ruled the roost, and of those the Triumph Bonneville was the king.   My father rode a 1966 Triumph Bonneville, and I’ve owned a number of Triumphs from the ’60s and ’70s.  They were (and still are) awesome motorcycles.  It just makes sense to me that ’60s-era British vertical twins are a platform deserving of the sincerest form of flattery (i.e., copying), and apparently, the modern incarnations from Kawasaki, Royal Enfield, and Triumph do exactly that.  Well, maybe not exactly, but enough to let you imagine you’re Steve McQueen.

These videos are fun to watch.  The narrators are funny as hell and there are some great quotes.  One was, “I’m not even going to try to keep up with you on the way back…you just take care of yourself and watch out for buffalo.”  That quote reminded me of Gresh’s video when he entered a corner a bit too hot on a Harley Sportster and famously said, “It handles pretty well when it’s out of control.”

The video editing and imaging in these two videos are superior (way better, in my opinion, than what you see from the self-proclaimed videomeisters here in the US).   And the tech content is light years ahead of the typical vlogger tripe clogging up our bandwidth.

Enjoy, my friends.

Here’s a fun fact:  All three of these bikes (the Royal Enfield Interceptor, the Kawasaki W800, and the Triumph Bonneville) purport to copy British vertical twins, yet none of these bikes are British.  The Enfield is made in India, the Kawasaki is made in Japan, and the Triumph is made in Thailand.

I ride a Royal Enfield 650.  I like my Enfield, and for the money, the Enfield has to be one of the best buys ever in motorcycling.  Gresh and I already did a road test of the Enfield in Baja, and you can read our reports on it here.  One of these days in the near future I’ll do a road test my current Enfield and tell you what it’s like to own one of these grand machines, but I’ve got another road test I’m going to post first.  That’s on the 250cc CSC RX3, 5 years in.  Good buddy Sergeant Zuo over in Lanzhou has 50,000 miles on his RX3 and it’s still going strong.

I am enjoying my Enfield, and I just found a bunch of Enfield accessories available online through Amazon.  I’ll poke around on there a bit later today.

Stay tuned, folks.  More good stuff is coming your way.

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The $100 Hamburger…

The $100 hamburger:  It’s aviation slang for any hamburger that requires flying in to a local airport for a burger. I first heard the term from good buddy Margit Chiriaco Rusche when researching the story on the General Patton Memorial Museum.  You see, there’s still an airport at Chiriaco Summit, left over from General George Patton’s Desert Training Center.  Margit told me about pilots flying in for the mythical $100 hamburger at the Chiriaco Summit Café, and I knew I had to have one as soon as she mentioned it.  The Café doesn’t actually charge a hundred bucks (it was only $15.66 with a giant iced tea, fries, and a side of chili); the $100 figure pertains to what it would cost a pilot to fly your own plane to Chiriaco Summit, enjoy the General Patton Burger, and fly out.

Even though bloggers like Gresh and me are rolling in dough, we don’t have our own airplanes.  But we have the next best thing.  Gresh has his Kawasaki Z1 900, and I have my Royal Enfield Interceptor.

Good buddy Marty (a dude with whom I’ve been riding for more than 20 years) told me he needed to get out for a ride and I suggested the Patton Museum.  It’s a 250-mile round trip for us, and the trip (along with the General Patton Burger, which is what you see in the big photo above) would be just what the doctor ordered.  I’d have my own hundred dollar burger, and at a pretty good price, too.  Two tanks of gas (one to get there and one to get home) set me back $16, and it was $18 (including tip) for the General Patton Burger.  I had my hundred dollar burger at a steep discount.  And it was great.

I’ll confess…it had been a while since I rode the Enfield.  In fact, it’s been a while since I’d been on any ride.  I didn’t sleep too much the night before (pre-ride jitters, I guess) and I was up early.   I pushed the Enfield out to the curb and my riding amigos showed up a short time later.  There would be four of us on this ride (me, Marty, and good buddies Joe and Doug).   Marty’s a BMW guy; Joe and Doug both ride Triumph Tigers.

As motorcycle rides go, we had great weather and a boring road.  It was 125 miles on the 210 and 10 freeways to get to the Patton Museum and the same distance back.   Oh, I know, there were other roads and we could have diverted through Joshua Tree National Park, but like I said, I hadn’t ridden in a while and boring roads were what I wanted.

The Patton Museum was a hoot, as it always is.  I had my super fast 28mm Nikon lens (which is ideal for a lot of things), and I shot more than a few photos that day.  You can have a lot of fun with a camera, a fast lens, a motorcycle, and good friends.  A fast 28mm lens is good for indoor available light (no flash) photography, and I grabbed several photos inside the Patton Museum.

It was a bit strange looking at the photos of the World War II general officers, including the one immediately above.  I realized that all of us (Marty, Joe, Doug, and I) are older than any of the generals were during World War II.  War is a young man’s game, I guess.  Or maybe we’re just really old.

You can see our earlier pieces on the Patton Museum here and here.  It’s one of my favorite spots.  If you want to know more about Chiriaco Summit, the Chiriaco family, and the General Patton Memorial Museum’s origins, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Mary Gordon’s Chiriaco Summit.  It is an excellent read.

We rode the same roads home as the ride in, except it was anything but boring on the return leg.  We rode into very stiff winds through the Palm Springs corridor on the westward trek home, and the wind made for a spirited ride on my lighter, windshieldless Enfield Interceptor.  My more detailed impressions of the Enfield 650 will be a topic for a future blog, so stay tuned!

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It’s not a BSA!

I saw this YouTube video a few days ago on the Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor, and I’ve been meaning to post it here on the ExNotes blog.  I think YouTube motorcycle reviews are generally a time suck, but I enjoyed this one.  The dude who made it (MotoSlug, a guy I never heard of before) nailed it, I think, with his description of the Enfield, its capabilities, and the riding experience.  It’s no BSA, Senator, but it’s still a fun ride. Actually, it’s way better than any BSA I ever rode.

I’m inspired. It’s late afternoon here in So Cal, which is to say it’s hot.  When things cool off in a couple of hours, I’m going to fire up my Enfield (that’s it in the photo above) and go for a ride.

Read our story about riding Enfields in Baja here.

Guilt trips…

I haven’t been riding the new Enfield all that much since I bought it, which was exactly one week before the virus hit our shores.   You know, Covid 19, the lockdown, autonomous zone crises, and all that.  And as a consequence, I’ve come under heavy criticism from two good buddies for my failure to accumulate miles on the Taj Mahal (as I sometimes refer to my orange Interceptor).

“I can’t believe you’re not riding that new Enfield all the time,” said Joe Gresh.  Guilt.  The guy reminds me of my Mom.  You should try riding across China with him.

And then after I published that bit about getting out on the RX3, good buddy Rob had to weigh in:  “Take the Enfield on the same road,” he said.  “It will be a completely different ride.”  Guilt again.  If you don’t believe me, read the comments on the RX3 blog a few entries down.  Rob, a guy who rode with us on the Western America Adventure Ride.  He was waiting for us on a lawn chair by the side of the road early in the morning when we first met, already suited up, just before we crossed into Idaho.  Rob’s RX3 was parked right alongside, both man and motorcycle ready to roll as soon as we approached so we wouldn’t have to wait. He seemed like such a nice guy back then.

Well, it worked, guys.  Your guilt tripping got me out on the Enfield two days later, and it was awesome.  I didn’t do the Glendora Ridge Road ride, but I was up in the San Gabriels.  The very eastern end of that range, actually, riding deep into those glorious So Cal mountains through the little town of Lytle Creek.  I went right past the West End Gun Club without stopping to send lead downrange, and that doesn’t happen too often.  Not stopping in, that is.

So this is another one of those blogs where I’ll let the photos do the talking.  Here we go, folks.

The first time I ever put gas in the new Enfield, and it returned 58 mpg and change. That’s consistent with what I saw on the first tankful on the Enfield I rode in Baja. By the end of that trip (nearly 1500 miles later), the bike was consistently getting between 70 and 72 mpg. Not too shabby for a 650 twin.
This is a good-looking motorcycle. My good buddy Art over at Douglas Motorcycles gave me a hell of a deal on it.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I take a good photo. I look better in a full face helmet, people tell me.
Not today, but I had to stop for the photo op.  Top gun. That’s what I want to be.
You could interpret that sign to mean it’s okay to shoot at my street legal vehicle. Time to move along.
Ah, the great San Gabriels, just west of the little town of Lytle Creek. The road dead ends a few miles further.
A man, a motorcycle, America, and a mirror. Gets me every time.
Time to open her up a bit. But not too much. I’m still breaking in the Royal Enfield.
Editors hate these “motorcycle by the side of the road” shots. I kind of like them, especially when the road is in the San Gabriels.
And finally, re-entering the burbs. Lawrence of Suburbia, as Gresh sometimes calls me.  Look at those donuts.  There’s probably 20,000 miles of tire wear there;  the guy who did it probably owns stock in a tire company.  I used to have tire company shares when I worked for GenCorp, the corporation that owns General Tire, but that’s a story for another blog.

Wanna know a secret?  The ride above occurred several days ago.  I went for another ride this past Friday with good buddy Duane.  Duane was on his Indian, a motorcycle made in America.  I was on my Enfield, formerly a British motorcycle but now made in India.  As you can see above, the Enfield is a glorious orange and that’s the fastest color…just ask my good buddy Orlando (about the orange thing, that is).  Duane and I had a hell of a ride, and along the way we bumped into good buddies Steve and Rosemary by Silverwood.  But that, too, is a story for another blog.  Stay tuned!

Want to read about the Royal Enfield ride in Baja?   Just click here!  Want to know more about the CSC RX3 I mentioned above?  The skinny is just a click away.  Are you interested in a killer deal on a Triumph or a Royal Enfield?  Check out Douglas Motorcycles in San Bernardino!

Want to read a story about another beautiful motorcycle?  Motorcycle Classics recently published my piece about good buddy Steve’s stunning and brilliantly bright red ’82 Yamaha Seca.   You can read it here.

Interesting Times

I wish I had a few words of wisdom for everyone concerning this COVID 19 thing, but I do not, other than to say we’ll get through this, don’t hoard, and wash your hands.  That’s the extent of my advice, so let’s get on to lighter stuff, which I could sure use a good dose of these days.  Good buddy Duane sent a link for an Enfield story to me a day or two ago from Bloomberg news.  When I saw the source I thought perhaps Duane had gone over to the dark side (you know, Bloomberg and all), but I guess even egomaniacal billionaires like Mike (who obviously didn’t make it happen) find an acorn once in a while.  This is a story on the new Enfield, and they did a pretty good job with it.

Then another Enfield story popped up in my Facebook feed with a very cool Enfield video.  It’s light, I enjoyed it, and it pretty much sums up my feeling about motorcycles these days:

Enjoy, folks, and keep the faith.

ScooterScribes.news and more…

Ah, lots of good news and a few things to catch up on.  For starters, I was alerted to another top notch motorcycle site, and that’s Terry Roorda’s ScooterScribes.news site.  You’ll like it.

Terry is the former Thunder Press editor, and there’s lots of cool V-Twin stuff on ScooterScribes,  and you don’t have to be a Big Twin dude or dudette to appreciate it.  It’s good.  Trust me.

More good news…the ExNotes stickers are in, and the extensive Direct Mail arm of the ExNotes empire is busy sending them out.

We sent an email requesting your address if you signed up, so watch for it and shoot that info back to us.  We promise that as soon as we get your snail mail address and confirmed that you’re on our email list, we’ll shoot them out to you as soon as we get around to it.  Want to help us more?   Hey, share our site and get more folks to sign up for our automatic emails, or just get them to visit www.ExhaustNotes.us.   We think we’ve got a good thing going.  Guns, motorcycles, scooters, opinions, dream bikes, resurrected bikes, books, articles, Baja, and lots, lots more.   Let us know what you think by posting your comments here on the blog.   We get all kinds of inputs.  Folks want more on Harleys, they want less on Harleys, they want more political commentary (seriously?), they want less political commentary…hey, let us know.  There’s no guarantee we’ll take any of it seriously, but you never know.

Yet more news…several online pubs are breaking the news that Harley is working with a Chinese company to offer a small HD.

Hey, we saw a Chinese manufacturer making parts for Harley a decade ago.  But the recent news is this is going to be a complete small bike, just over 300cc.   I’m surprised Harley didn’t do this several years ago, but then, Gresh and I were in the catbird’s seat on the small bike thing from the gitgo.  CSC and Zongshen were way ahead of the curve on this one.  Dollars to donuts says that the small Harley will find its way to the US, and that’s a good thing.  I’ve seen the photos and I think it looks good.  I’m waiting for the inevitable jokes and the anti-China rants to start, but Harley, if you’re reading this, ignore those folks.  The only thing worse than a smartass is a dumbass, and anyone who criticizes a motorcycle based solely on its Chinese origin is most definitely in that latter category.

One last bit of news…make sure you pick up the latest issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine.   It’s got my feature story on our Enfield Baja trip, and my Destinations piece on Tecate.  Good stuff, Motorcycle Classics is.

Dream Bike: 1978 Triumph Bonneville

This is a blog I did for CSC a year or so ago, and it’s one I thought I would run again here.   We haven’t done a Dream Bikes blog in a while, and it’s time.

It’s raining, it’s cold here in southern California, and those two conditions are enough to keep me indoors today. I’ve been straightening things up here in the home office, and I came across a Triumph brochure from 1978. I bought a new Bonneville that year and as I type this, I realize that was a cool 40 years ago. Wowee. Surprisingly, the brochure scanned well, so much so that even the fine print is still readable…

Triumph had two 750 twins back then. One was the twin-carb Bonneville, and the other was the single-carb model (I think they called it the Tiger). The Bonneville came in brown or black and the Tiger came in blue or red (you can see the color palette in the third photo above). I liked the red and my dealer (in Fort Worth) swapped the tank from a Tiger onto my Bonneville. I loved that bike, and I covered a lot of miles in Texas on it. I used to ride with a friend and fellow engineer at General Dynamics named Sam back in the F-16 days (he had a Yamaha 500cc TT model, which was another outstanding bike back in the day). I wish I still had that Bonneville.

After I sold the Bonneville, I turned right around and bought a ’79 Electra-Glide Classic. There’s a brochure buried around here somewhere on that one, and if I come across it I’ll see how it scans. The Harley had a lot of issues, but it’s another one I enjoyed owning and riding, and it’s another I wish I still owned.

So there you have it.   That ’78 Bonneville is a bike I still have dreams about, and they were made all the more poignant by the Royal Enfield Interceptor I rode in Baja last month.  You can read about the Enfield Interceptor and our Baja adventures here.

Want to read more pieces like this?  Check out our other Dream Bikes here!

Back from Baja…

BajaBound, the best insurance when venturing south of the border.

I’m enjoying a cup of coffee in my favorite mug, nice and warm at home listening to the rain coming down on this fine post-Baja morning.   As much fun as riding in Baja is, it’s always good to be home.   Joe is somewhere on the road east of Quartzite, headed to his home on the Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico.   Ours was a grand Baja adventure ride, and we only had a tiny bit of rain during the last few miles yesterday.

I have a bunch of Interceptor and Bullet photos that I’ll be sharing in the next few days with more information on each bike, and Joe has bunch more and a lot of video.  Like always, he’ll be assembling a video review, and like always, it will be great.

Our special thanks to Royal Enfield North America for trusting us with their motorcycles, and in particular, our good buddy Bree (who made it all happen).

Want to catch up on our Baja Royal Enfield ride?  Hey, here you go…

BajaBound on Royal Enfield
18 Again
The Bullet Hits Home
We’re Off
We’re Off 2
Snapshot
Tecate
San Quintin
Royal Enfield 650cc Twin: First Real Ride
The Plucky Bullet
Guerrero Negro
Ballenos
Whales
The Bullet in Baja
A Funny Thing
No One Goes Hungry
Day 7 and a Wake Up

Oh, and one more thing…don’t forget to sign up for our automatic email updates.   In another 10 days we’ll be announcing the winner of this quarter’s free moto book giveaway, and all you need to do to enter is get your name on our email list!